Appropriations

As your representative in Congress, one of my foremost duties is to help ensure that South Texas receives our fair share of federal funding.

The President initiates the annual budget cycle when he submits his annual budget for the upcoming fiscal year to Congress and recommends spending levels for various programs and agencies of the federal government in the form of budget authority.

The budget resolution is Congress's response to the President's budget. The budget resolution must cover at least five fiscal years: the upcoming fiscal year plus the four subsequent fiscal years.

Congress annually considers several appropriations measures, which provide funding for numerous activities, for example, national defense, education, and homeland security, as well as general government operations.

Appropriations measures are under the jurisdiction of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees.

The jurisdictions of the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees are generally parallel. That is, each House appropriations subcommittee is paired with a Senate appropriations subcommittee and the two subcommittees' jurisdictions are generally identical. As currently organized, there are 12 subcommittees:

The House Appropriations Committee reports the 12 regular appropriations bills separately to the full House.

The House and Senate may resolve their differences in their respective bills in a conference report or through an exchange of amendments.

In FY 2014 the House and Senate were able to forgo the use of a continuing resolution and were successful in passing a full year Omnibus Appropriations bill. By providing for annual funding in the FY14 Omnibus Congress fulfilled its basic duty by providing funds for every aspect of the federal government.

The Bipartisan bill included investments in our national defense, transportation infrastructure and veterans pensions. Each year Congress passes budget and appropriations bills to fund national priorities such as infrastructure, education, law enforcement, and defense. For further details regarding the FY 2014 Omnibus Bill, click here